This book discusses erotic and magical goddesses and heroines in several ancient cultures, from the Near East and Asia, and throughout ancient Europe; in prehistoric and early historic iconography, their magical qualities are often indicated by a magical dance or stance. It is a look at female display figures both cross-culturally and cross-temporally, through texts and iconography, beginning with figures depicted in very early Neolithic Anatolia, early and middle Neolithic southeast Europe--Bulgaria, Romania, and Serbia--continuing through the late Neolithic in East Asia, and into early historic Greece, India, and Ireland, and elsewhere across the world. These very similar female figures were depicted in Anatolia, Europe, Southern Asia, and East Asia, in a broad chronological sweep, beginning with the pre-pottery Neolithic, ca. 9000 BCE, and existing from the beginning of the second millennium of this era up to the present era. This book demonstrates the extraordinary similarities, in a broad geographic range, of depictions and descriptions of magical female figures who give fertility and strength to the peoples of their cultures by means of their magical erotic powers. This book uniquely contains translations of texts which describe these ancient female figures, from a multitude of Indo-European, Near Eastern, and East Asian works, a feat only possible given the authors' formidable combined linguistic expertise in over thirty languages. The book contains many photographs of these geographically different, but functionally and artistically similar, female figures. Many current books (academic and otherwise) explore some of the female figures the authors discuss in their book, but such a wide-ranging cross-cultural and cross-temporal view of this genre of female figures has never been undertaken until now. The "sexual" display of these female figures reflects the huge numinosity of the prehistoric divine feminine, and of her magical genitalia. The functions of fertility and apotropaia, which count among the functions of the early historic display and dancing figures, grow out of this numinosity and reflect the belief in and honoring of the powers of the ancient divine feminine.

This book contains an Open Access Chapter In 1995, the Fourth World Conference on Women: Action for Equality, Development and Peace affirmed the need to address gender inequalities and foster gender integration. Ever since, the field of gender professionals has been growing, yet the experiences, insights and data gathered have not been systematically examined and incorporated into an accessible body of knowledge. Working to address this, expert contributors demonstrate the depth and breadth of gender and practice. Including examples from Brazil, Cameroon, Ecuador, Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, the USA, and Vietnam, as well as chapters that take a global perspective, the research here looks at issues and activities relating to infusing gender in knowledge management, training, and practice. Including subjects such as education, agricultural production, and tourism, this volume offers a variety of perspectives that will appeal to any researcher in gender. Throughout the volume, expert practitioners situate their real-world experiences in the broader intersectional framework employed by their academic colleagues, offering policy makers, students, scholars, practitioners, and activists concrete examples of how and why gender is central to development.

After the Second World War, two contrasting political movements became increasingly active in Italy - the communist and feminist movements. In this book, Walter Baroni uses autobiographical life-writing from both movements key protagonists to shed new light on the history of these movements and more broadly the similarities and differences between political activists in post-war Italy.

The Partition of the Indian Subcontinent in 1947 unleashed unprecedented violence. In Feminist Fiction and the Indian Partition of 1947, Indian scholar Priyanka Gupta explores how women were doubly suppressed and victimized before and after the partition. The violence, and the displacement of large populations, made this historical episode of separation more and more significant for women. Novels set during the Partition offer unique viewpoints and perspectives that have not previously been explored.

This book provides a thorough interdisciplinary analysis of the ways in which artists have engaged with political and feminist grassroots movements to characterise a new direction in the production of feminist art. The authors conceptualise feminist art in Turkey through the lens of feminist philosophy by offering a historical analysis of how feminism and art interacts, analysing emerging feminist artwork and exploring the ways in which feminist art as a form opens alternative political spaces of social collectivities and dissent, to address epistemic injustices. The book also explores how the global art and feminist movements (particularly in Europe) have manifested themselves in the art scenery of Turkey and argues that feminist art has transformed into a form of political and protest art which challenges the hegemonic masculinity dominating the aesthetic debates and political sphere. It is an invaluable reading for students and scholars of sociology of art, gender studies and political sociology.

*A WATERSTONES 'BEST POLITICAL BOOK OF THE YEAR'* *A TIMES 'BEST PHILOSOPHY AND IDEAS' BOOK OF 2021* *A GUARDIAN 'BEST POLITICS BOOKS OF THE YEAR'* LONGLISTED FOR THE 2022 BUSINESS BOOK AWARD 'A brilliant manifesto explaining why women are still so underestimated and overlooked in today's world, but how we can also be hopeful for change' - Philippa Perry 'An impassioned, meticulously argued and optimistic call to arms for anyone who cares about creating a fairer society' - Observer __________ Imagine living in a world in which you were routinely patronised by women. Imagine having your views ignored or your expertise frequently challenged by them. Imagine people always addressing the woman you are with before you. Now imagine a world in which the reverse of this is true. The Authority Gap provides a startling perspective on the unseen bias at work in our everyday lives, to reveal the scale of the gap that still persists between men and women. Would you believe that US Supreme Court Justices are interrupted four times more often than male ones... 96% of the time by men? Or that British parents, when asked to estimate their child's IQ will place their son at 115 and their daughter at 107? Marshalling a wealth of data with precision and insight, and including interviews with pioneering women such as Baroness Hale, Mary Beard and Bernadine Evaristo, Mary Ann exposes unconscious bias in this fresh feminist take on how to address and counteract systemic sexism in ways that benefit us all. Includes interviews with pioneering women such as: Baroness Hale Mary Beard Bernadine Evaristo Mary McAleese Julia Gillard Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes Cherie Blair Liz Truss Amber Rudd Frances Morris Laura Bates __________ 'Hugely exciting' - Emily Maitlis 'Deeply researched, profoundly thoughtful and a book very much for the here and now: Mary Ann Sieghart's The Authority Gap is the book she was probably born to write' - Andrew Marr 'At last here is a credible roadmap that is capable of taking women from the margins to the centre by bridging the authority gap that holds back even the best and most talented of women. - Mary McAleese, Former President of Ireland

How should feminist theories conceive of the subject? What is it to be a legal person? What part does embodiment play in subjectivity? Can there be a conception of rights which does justice to the social contexts in which rights claims are embedded? Is the way the law constitutes legal subjects a form of violence? These questions lie at the heart of contemporary feminist theory, and in this collection they are addressed by a group of distinguished international scholars working in law, philosophy and politics. The volume, in which the concerns of one author are taken up by others, advances current debate on two interconnected levels. First, it contains original and ground-breaking discussions of the questions raised above. At the same time, it contains a more reflexive strand of argument about the intellectual resources available to feminist thinkers, and the advantages and dangers of borrowing from non-feminist traditions of thought. It thus provides an exceptionally rich examination of contemporary legal and political feminist theory.

View the Table of Contents
Read the Introduction

aThe selected documents give a taste of Stantonas often-contradictory ideas and successfully demonstrate how they evolved over time under the influence of contemporary intellectual movement. This work provides a solid basis for deeper investigations into Stantonas role as a nineteenth-century feminist thinker.a
--"Choice"

aThe editors are, there fore, successful in their aim: like her or not, Stantonas ideas should be studied by any serious feminist, historian or student of democracy at large.a
--"Feminist Review"

aIt is high time to respect Elizabeth Cady Stanton as a founding thinker and actor in the shaping of American society, politics, and ideas. This fascinating book enriches our understanding by giving us her own most eloquent words accompanied by the wise evaluations of some of our leading historians and writers.a--Linda K. Kerber, author of "No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship"

"I picked up this book wondering what, if anything, even these formidable scholars could tell me about Elizabeth Cady Stanton that I hadn't already read. I put it down in awe--with a new appreciation of Stanton's brilliance, originality, and complexity as the intellectual genius behind the first wave of feminism. Her 19th century vision resonates for everyone in 21st century America."--Lynn Sherr, ABC News

More than one hundred years after her death, Elizabeth Cady Stanton still stands--along with her close friend Susan B. Anthony--as the major icon of the struggle for women's suffrage. In spite of this celebrity, Stanton's intellectual contributions have been largely overshadowed bythe focus on her political activities, and she is yet to be recognized as one of the major thinkers of the nineteenth century.

Here, at long last, is a single volume exploring and presenting Stanton's thoughtful, original, lifelong inquiries into the nature, origins, range, and solutions of women's subordination. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Feminist as Thinker reintroduces, contextualizes, and critiques Stanton's numerous contributions to modern thought. It juxtaposes a selection of Stanton's own writings, many of them previously unavailable, with eight original essays by prominent historians and social theorists interrogating Stanton's views on such pressing social issues as religion, marriage, race, the self and community, and her place among leading nineteenth century feminist thinkers. Taken together, these essays and documents reveal the different facets, enduring insights, and fascinating contradictions of the work of one of the great thinkers of the feminist tradition.

Contributors: Barbara Caine, Richard CAndida Smith, Ellen Carol DuBois, Ann D. Gordon, Vivian Gornick, Kathi Kern, Michele Mitchell, and Christine Stansell.

This edited volume of translations covers the major political essays of India's first feminist Hindi poet. A devout follower and advocate of Gandhi, Mahadevi Varma is a household name in India and is a major woman of letters in the modern Hindi world. The essays collected in this volume represent some of Mahadevi Varma s most famous writings on the woman question in India. The collection also includes an introduction to her life, with biographical notes, an analysis of her importance in the field of Hindi letters, as well as a selection of her poems these latter because Mahadevi Varma made her mark in the world of Hindi literature through her poetry, and a volume of translations would be incomplete without a sampling of them. The introduction to the translated volume sketches Mahadevi Varma's life and work and her significance to both the development of modern standard Hindi as well as to the nascent women's movement underway in the 1920s in India. Little scholarly attention has been given in the academy outside of India to Varma s numerous contributions to women s education, to the development of modern standard Hindi, and to political thought during the Independence movement in late-colonial India. This volume of translations engages themes like language and nationalism, women s roles as artists, the politics of motherhood and marriage themes that continue to be relevant to women s lives in contemporary India and to movements for women s rights outside India as well. This volume of translations of Mahadevi Varma s feminist political essays is the first of its kind. While some of these essays, especially those from Mahadevi Varma s Hamari Shrinkhala Ki Kariyan collection have been translated by Neera K. Sohoni and published under the title Links in the Chain (Katha, 2003), there is no sustained treatment of Varma s political thinking in one, accessible volume. While there is ample work on Varma in Hindi, scholars of feminism (and students of Hindi who are in the nascent stages of language acquisition) have nowhere to turn for a comprehensive sampling of her work. Mahadevi Varma is also one of the most difficult writers to access even for trained scholars of Hindi language and literature. Her highly Sanskritized diction and her stylized prose sketches make her work a pleasure to read in the original but daunting to translate into English. This volume has contributions from some of the most highly regarded Hindi experts. In the editor s introduction to the volume of translations a brief biographical sketch followed by an analysis of the political climate of Northern India has been provided so that the reader unfamiliar with India of the 1920s-1940s will have the necessary historical context to place her work. The introduction to the volume also raises the issue of why she gave up writing poetry and turned solely to writing prose when she became involved with the movements for women s rights and national independence. Finally, the volume provides feminist cultural historians a rich archive of how Indian women like Mahadevi Varma were actively negotiating their lives as women, activists, artists, teachers, and married women. This work will be of use to scholars of Hindi language and literature in the US/European academy and should be of interest to cultural and feminist historians of modern India. This volume will introduce Mahadevi Varma s literary scope to an English-speaking audience, and will serve as a reference for feminist historians of the nationalist period in the Indian subcontinent.

This book is a thorough study about the upcoming of elite women in Eritrea, encompassing the time of the armed struggle for liberation as well as its aftermath up to the tenth anniversary of Eritrean independence in 2001 and beyond. It is a multi-disciplinary study, combining a comprehensive analysis of Eritrean history, society and political developments with extensive case study research into the lives of different groups of elite women. Modernisation processes created by the Eritrean revolution fostered an environment in which women are regarded as equal and encouraged to occupy positions of leadership. At the same time, the revolution's hegemonic ideology does not envisage women opting out of its version of modernity, thus new avenues open up only for those who subscribe to the revolution's narrative of progress. Furthermore, it is argued that while the Eritrean revolution played a decisive role in opening up possibilities for women's emancipation, a failure to implement democratic structures of governance puts the revolution's societal achievements at risk - its legacy might well rest with possibilities of personal liberation in individual lives.

This book offers scholars and students outside Korea some insight into what forms feminist biblical interpretation takes in Korea and what approaches Korean feminists adopt for dealing with the Bible in their writing and their professional lives. The contributors to this book represent a wide spectrum of the Korean feminist Christian movement. They include university and seminary teachers, ministers, and field workers. This book is a product of their numerous meetings and discussions on the practical issues that define contemporary Korean women's lives. In it, the contributors reflect on the diverse situations modern Korean women have faced and continue to struggle with, among them, the traditional religious culture based on Confucianism, economic globalization, postcolonialism, the problems of migrant women labourers, and the trauma of being forced into sexual slavery for Japanese soldiers during World War II. They view these situations in the light of the lives and experiences of women in the Old and New Testaments, and they look to the Bible for resources for dealing with them. This is socially engaged biblical interpretation. It goes beyond the academic study of the Bible to a wider engagement with the church and with Korean society. The volume is published in cooperation with Ewha Institute for Women's Theological Studies.

Explores the perils and promise of feminist social media activism Social media has become the front-and-center arena for feminist activism. Responding to and enacting the political potential of pain inflicted in acts of sexual harassment, violence, and abuse, Asian American and Asian Canadian feminist icons such as rupi kaur, Margaret Cho, and Mia Matsumiya have turned to social media to share their stories with the world. But how does such activism reconcile with the platforms on which it is being cultivated, when its radical messaging is at total odds with the neoliberal logic governing social media? Pain Generation troubles this phenomenon by articulating a "neoliberal self(ie) gaze" through which these feminist activistssee and storify the self on social media as "good" neoliberal subjects who are appealing, inspiring, and entertaining. This book offers a fresh perspective on feminist activism by demonstrating how the problematic neoliberal logic governing digital spaces like Instagram and Twitter limits the possibilities of how one might use social media for feminist activism.

An examination, with feminist perspective, of Israel's fertility practices and policies surrounding abortion, family planning, "in vitro" fertilization and the welfare state. This book exposes the complex web of issues, actors, and power relations that shape the Israeli political agenda. At the same time, it contributes to ongoing feminist debates concerning the politics of reproduction and the role of the state in contributing to the oppression of women.

Israel's commmitment to Zionist ideals and policies, its ambiguous relationship with Jewish Orthodoxy, and the intersection of the two at the level of gender relations have played a great role in determining the shape, scope, and direction of many government policies. This book explores the relationship between these three ideological and institutional forces in the context of development of fertility policy. In the process, it touches upon various points of interest, including the state's treatment of the Palestinian Arab minority and its relationship with the wider Palestinian national movement; the power relations and political agenda underlying policy-making in Israel; the development of Israeli social and political identity; and the use of gender to explain both the status of Israeli women and the overall unfolding of politics and policy-making.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Women's Activism and "Second Wave" Feminism situates late 20th-century feminisms within a global framework of women's activism. Its chapters, written by leading international scholars, demonstrate how issues of heterogeneity, transnationalism, and intersectionality have transformed understandings of historical feminism. It is no longer possible to imagine that feminism has ever fostered an unproblematic sisterhood among women blind to race, ethnicity, class, sexuality, nationality and citizenship status. The chapters in this collection modify the "wave" metaphor in some cases and in others re-periodize it. By studying individual movements, they collectively address several themes that advance our understandings of the history of feminism, such as the rejection of "hegemonic" feminism by marginalized feminist groups, transnational linkages among women's organizations, transnational flows of ideas and transnational migration. By analyzing practical activism, the chapters in this volume produce new ways of theorizing feminism and new historical perspectives about the activist locations from which feminist politics emerged. Including histories of feminisms in the United States, Canada, South Africa, India, France, Russia, Japan, Korea, Poland and Chile, Women's Activism and "Second Wave" Feminism provides a truly global re-appraisal of women's movements in the late 20th century.

In the hundred years since The Women's Bible, giant strides have been made in feminist interpretation of the Bible. Now comes the first comprehensive overview of the whole field. The authors systematically recount those efforts to describe the story of women in both testaments, to uncover tendencies not supportive of women, and to describe biblical traditions that empower women. The book unfolds in three parts: Historical, Hermeneutical, and Methodological Foundations Toward a Feminist Reconstruction of the History of Israel Toward a Feminist Reconstruction of Early Christianity

THOMAS HARDY'S JUDE THE OBSCURE

A study of Jude the Obscure using contemporary feminist and literary theory.

Illustrated, with notes and a bibiography.

Jude the Obscure (1895), Thomas Hardy's last novel, is a sister (or brother) book to Tess of the d'Urbervilles, before he turned to poetry and other forms of writing. The author attacks similar targets: the family, politics, religion, marriage, education and sexuality. Hardy was on fire when he wrote Jude the Obscure - it is a very angry work.

Jude the Obscure, though, contains far more polemic and philosophizing than Tess or any of the earlier novels. The preaching and polemic threatens to undo the narrative, which is nevertheless 'realist', like other Thomas Hardy fictions.

In Jude the Obscure, Hardy was stretching the novel to the limit, testing the boundaries of what is 'acceptable'. In Jude the Obscure, the things that say 'you shan't' are, variously, God, religion, education, circumstance, chance, nature, and marriage. All of the institutions and 'causes' reside inside the individual, which is what makes the problems they create so difficult to deal with for Sue and Jude. Patriarchy, culture and society are not in some 'out there' space, but in people. Hardy's thoughts on Jude the Obscure, as expressed in the Life and letters, include his desire for a novel about characters 'into whose souls the iron has entered'; a desire to make the story 'grimy' in order to heighten the contrast between the ideal life and the 'squalid real life'; the novel 'makes for morality', Hardy said; and ended up 'a mass of imperfections', a remark many artists have made of their work.

This long-awaited text charts clearly and comprehensively the enormously important area of feminist theory -- and brings it into fruitful conversation with Christian theology. Jones introduces the primary concerns that animate feminist theory through discussion of critical texts and through women's narratives. She shows how they pose uncomfortable questions, and leave no corner of the Christian tradition unchallenged. Jones unfolds feminist theory in three broad categories that analyze human identity and gender, oppression, and ethics. She then illustrates their potential for illuminating theological categories of experience, truth, text, and norm to revitalize three key traditional Christian doctrines: faith, sin, and church.

Offering an introduction to the key concepts and themes in French feminist thought, both the materialist and the linguistic/psychoanalytic traditions, this title explores the work of a wide range of theorists: Simone de Beauvoir, Chantal Chawaf, Helene Cixous, Catherine Clement, Christine Delphy, Marguerite Duras, Colette Guillaumin, Madeleine Gagnon, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Nicole-Claude Mathieu, Michele Montreley, Monique Plaza, Paola Tabet and Monique Wittig. It outlines the philosophical and political diversity of French feminism, setting developments in the field in the particular cultural and social contexts in which they have emerged and unfolded. The principal areas covered are: ongoing debates on the cultural construction and definition of sexual and gendered identities; the relationship between subjectivity and language; the roles played by both private and public institutions in the shaping of sexual relations; the issue of embodiment; and the relationship between gender, sexuality and race. Finally, the book traces the connections between French and Anglo-American feminist approaches and methodologies.

Until recently, scholars assumed that women "stopped speaking" after they won the vote in 1920 and did not reenter political life until the second wave of feminism began in the 1960s. Nothing could be further from the truth. While national attention did dissipate after 1920, women did not retreat from political and civic life. Rather, after winning the vote, women's public activism shifted from a single-issue agenda to the myriad social problems and public issues that faced the nation. As such, women began to take their place in the public square as political actors in their own rights rather than strictly campaigning for a "women's issue." This anthology documents women's activism during this period by introducing heretofore unpublished public speeches that address a wide array of debated topics including child labor, international relations, nuclear disarmament, consumerism, feminism and anti-feminism, social welfare, family life, war, and the environment. Some speeches were delivered in legislative forums, others at schools, churches, business meetings, and media events; still others before national political organizations. To ensure diversity, the volume features speakers of different ages, races, classes, ethnicities, geographic regions, and political persuasions. The volume editors include short biographical introductions as well as historical context for each selection.

This first major study of feminist theory, revised and updated here into its fourth edition, now takes the reader into the twenty-first century. With the renewed interest in feminism, which has been called "the "fourth wave" of feminism - the "first wave" being the nineteenth-century movement, the "second wave" the developments between 1960-80, and the "third wave" the emergence in the 1990s of ecofeminism, global feminism, the intertwining of the women's rights and animal rights movements, and so-called postmodern feminism - people are re-engaging with the basic question, "What is feminism? What does it mean?" Donovan's book provides a clear answer to the question, outlining the various strands of feminist theory: liberal, cultural, Marxist-socialist, Freudian, and radical. This Fourth Edition brings the discussion up-to-date, integrating the developments in feminist theory that have emerged in the last two decades and particularly since the publication of the Third Edition (2000).

'Do you see that mountain?' asked the king, pointing to a huge mass that towered into the sky about three leagues from Schiraz; 'go and bring me the leaf of a palm that grows at the foot.' The words were hardly out of the king's mouth when the Indian turned a screw placed in the horse's neck, close to the saddle, and the animal bounded like lightning up into the air, and was soon beyond sight even of the sharpest eyes. -from "The Enchanted Horse" A startlingly prolific collector of fairy tales from around the world, Andrew Lang, in this 1898 work, brought together in one volume the "fairy tales of the East," the delightful and resoundingly entertaining adventures of The Arabian Nights. Translated from a French version that omits all the "very dull and stupid" additions of early European retellings, this wonderful book regales us with the stories of Sindbad and his seven voyages, the "Vizir who was Punished," Aladdin and his magic lamp, and many, many more. Complete with beautiful pen-and-ink illustrations, this is a collection to treasure, whether you're studying comparative mythology or just seeking a rollicking good read. Scottish journalist and author ANDREW LANG (1844-1912), a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, produced a stunning variety and number of volumes, including books of poetry, novels, children's books, histories, and biographies, as well as criticism, essays, scholarly works of anthropology, and translations of classical literature. * * *